Things I Need You To Know is the fourth novel by Australian director and author, Mark Lamprell. After the funeral, Birdie McBride thinks she might not have married Ned if she’d known he was going to exit life only seventeen years after the wedding. At the time, though, she knew he was a good, solid, trustworthy man; she also knew he loved her with a passion she was unable to reciprocate.

Ned had seen the toxic effect of the poor parenting a pair of narcissistic show-business parents had inflicted on Birdie and her brother, Mitchell, and was determined to make Birdie and their children feel unconditionally loved, the way his mother had single-handedly done for him.

The passion Birdie had hoped she might develop for him over their years together had never materialised, but she recognised just how lucky she had been: a decent man who willingly became the primary carer for their five daughters and ran their home with tireless competency, allowing Birdie to pursue her legal career.

It’s when she discovers a thick, printed and bound document titled “Things I Need You To Know” in Ned’s studio, and opens it to find what is virtually an instruction manual for their home and family, “meticulous and thoughtful— a bible of fatherhood, aching with care”, that she falls in love with him.

Birdie freely admits she’s a hopelessly inadequate mother and housewife, but “if she remained at home flagellating herself over her failure to cherish a man who had been a fine husband and an extraordinary father, she would at some point implode.” She goes back to work, but has difficulty remaining focussed: “It was as if someone had stolen her magic armour.”

As her daughters begin to act out, and Birdie is hit harder by grief than she ever expected, she understandably falls apart for a bit, bringing down the attentions of her less-than-helpful mother, and Marcello Architto, Ned’s best friend since high school, the attractive doctor who oversaw his palliative care, who is inconveniently persistent with his visits.

Their selfish affair is long over, and she’s not tempted (is she?) but he is now unattached and seems intent on charming Birdie’s daughters and her mother, the eternally-attention-seeking Dawn; Birdie, though, recalls how manipulative he was when they first dated at Uni, so she’s a little wary. Too wary?

Lamprell delivers a credible plot, a dramatic climax, and a cast of characters that mostly endear themselves to the reader, for all their virtues and their quirky flaws: Birdie and her girls, Mitchell, even Dawn, but especially Ned. The exception to this is the one whose actions will leave the reader gasping. Some may find the use of expletives around children is a bit excessive. This topical, captivating and moving novel, which explores grief and trust and mothering, is Lamprell’s best yet.
This unbiased review is from a copy provided by Text Publishing.
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